Basics of Daily Magical Practice

The best way to find out if someone is a real magician is to ask them about their daily practice regimen. If they look confused or stumble through their answer it means that you should take their practical advice with a grain of salt and defer to your own experiences. If they pompously proclaim not only that they do no daily practices but that you should do the same, you should dismiss them as an utter fool and ignore anything else they have to say. It's pretty much guaranteed to be worthless.

Magick is an experiential discipline. That means that you actually have to do it to understand how it works. Study is very useful in terms of pointing you in the right direction, but there's a big difference between knowing how something could in theory be accomplished and actually doing it. I'll repeat this analogy one more time - a magician who does no daily practice is like a professional athlete who doesn't work out aside from showing up to play on game day. Rare talents can get away with it, but the vast majority of us are not nearly so special. Furthermore, even if you can do no work and still get results, imagine how much better you could be with the foundation of a disciplined course of practice.

Most introductory books on magick cover the basic rituals, but in many cases they are vague and incomplete regarding a what constitutes a solid set of practices, so here are my suggestions. These are the standard Golden Dawn rituals that are used by many ritual magick groups, and while as a Thelemite my practices incorporate more of Aleister Crowley's ritual forms, the structure shown here follows the same framework as the sequence that I have been practicing for many years.

(1) The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. This is the best rendition of the ritual that I have managed to find online, though it does contain one point on which I need to comment.

The linked page calls this ritual "The Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram Banishing Earth" and has links to other "Lesser Rituals" for Fire, Air, and Water. This is incorrect - the ritual shown is simply the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, which in its standard form uses the Earth pentagram. You don't use the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram to banish or invoke specific elements - you use the Greater Ritual of the Pentagram to do that. The Greater Rituals of the Pentagram and Hexagram are used for specific ceremonial operations as explained in the text of the various spells I have written up on this site, not for daily practice.

The Thelemic equivalent for this ritual is the Star Ruby.

(2) The Lesser Invoking Ritual of the Hexagram. Using the invoking form of the Lesser Ritual of the Hexagram here opens the operant field so that your invocation of divinity and statement of intent will be more effective. It also does not shut down spells in progress, which is what happens if you use the banishing form here.

The Thelemic equivalent for this ritual is the Star Sapphire.

(3) The Middle Pillar Ritual. While the Middle Pillar was written after Crowley's death so he could not comment on it, in my opinion the Thelemic equivalent to this ritual is The Elevenfold Seal from Liber V vel Reguli and I have gotten good results using it in that capacity over many years.

(4) The Statement of Intent. When you are working magick you should always be trying to accomplish something. For daily practice, that goal should include spiritual awakening and the accomplishment of your True Will. A sample statement might be something to the effect of "Set my True Will in motion and bring me to the accomplishment of the Great Work, the Summum Bonum, True Wisdom and Perfect Happiness." Conclude the statement by vibrating a word of power such as AUMGN or AMEN.

Another possible Thelemic sequence would be:

(1) Liber V vel Reguli in full.
(2) The Star Sapphire.
(3) The Statement of Intent.

Liber V vel Reguli includes The Elevenfold Seal so you can go straight from the Star Sapphire to the Statement of Intent with this sequence.

Whatever practice sequence you decide upon using, you should do it at least once a day, generally when you wake up in the morning or before you go to sleep. You can also do both, which is great if your schedule allows it.

Meditation is another useful daily practice. I generally keep my meditation session separate from my ceremonial practices because while they complement each other in terms of how they work in your life magick and meditation are based on different mindsets. Meditation is more reflective and receptive, whereas magick is more active and expansive. Also, techniques that work with the body such as Pranayama, Yoga, Qigong, and Tai Chi are good for building up the more physical aspects of magical practice in addition to helping you stay in better physical shape. I figure if I'm going to work out anyway for health reasons, I might as well be augmenting my magical ability at the same time.

All this sounds like a lot, and it can be. It is very possible to go through periods during which much of your day is spent doing practices, and often this is difficult if you have to work a job and take care of a household at the same time. My recommendation is to start with a basic set, try to be as disciplined as possible about it, and once you have established a consistent practice you can add onto it one element at a time. There's nothing wrong with a simple set of practices if that's what you can stick to, and it's better to be consistent over a long period of time than it is to be "hardcore" for a short period and burn yourself out. However, you should also keep in mind that in magick, like any other sort of activity, the more practices you do the better you get and the faster you will progress.

UPDATE: A good point brought up in the comments is that Crowley considered the Star Ruby and Star Sapphire to be improved versions of the pentagram and hexagram rituals, so the term "equivalent" is inaccurate. I thought about this when I was writing up this post, but I wasn't really sure what the right term would be. I considered "corresponding" but that's not exactly correct either. So I'm going to leave the article as is, but with this additional notation.